Kickstarter Feature

[Kesimir]

I'd like to request the Escapist dedicate a staff member, hire a new position, or at least have the Escapist community maintain a weekly feature or forum thread that scours Kickstarter looking for the coolest things in gaming projects in order to tell the rest of us how best to spend our well (or dubiously) earned monies!

Seriously that place is amazing and I am quickly becoming cocaine-level addicted to supporting the craziest things that for some reason just resonate with me. No lie, I just pledged $40 to an upstart underwear company... and now I am genuinely interested in their well-being. It's a very weird feeling.

Anyway, on to more topical matters. What really prompted me to write this request is that I recently found this and immediately fell in love with it. It reminds me of a game idea I read by Yahtzee (in an Extra Punctuation article I think) where he describes a character that can only see by hacking into security cameras. Only, and no offense, I like this concept much better. It is survival horror, stealth tactical and action all in one. And the voicing for the main character Hope sounds absolutely amazing, it above all else is what drew me in so completely to this project. And then when I thought my endorphin level could get no higher I saw that the project was less than 50% funded with 6 days left. Surely this travesty cannot stand. One of the most interesting and original* game concepts I have ever seen at high risk of failure due to the lack of community support I know it deserves...

So I don't think this project will get funded this time (and it could be argued that it was a little mismanaged on their part) but I really think it is a game that would appeal to a large portion of the Escapist community and if I am right and this merely escaped (seriously, no pun intended) our attention than I wonder what other gems we might miss on a weekly or monthly basis. If you like what Yahtzee and Jim and the other site contributors prattle on about each week concerning indie games it seems to me like Kickstarter is simply the perfect platform for us to speak loudly with our wallets.

And that's all I really wanted to say. I am not affiliated with this game or its dev team in any way (aside from my $60 pledge) I just really was drawn in after I saw it (somewhere between funding underwear companies and 3d printers... umm, whatever relationship you think those two have is strictly coincidental I assure you). So what do you think? Would you like to see a feature in the Escapist about kickstarter "games of the week"? And what about the game above, how awesome does it look right?!?

*Yahtzee wuz here first!

 

[Kae]

How sad, that game does look pretty awesome, but I get the feeling that Kickstarter is only working for people that have some level of recognition, besides 50000 is a lot of money specially if you are a newcomer, anyway I guess it would be neat since there is a lot of awesome stuff there, but I have a feeling that people will get burned out of kickstarter quickly so I'm not all that sure.

 

[Kesimir]

Yeh, the company behind Republique, Camoflaj, seems to have mismanaged their kickstarter campaign quite phenomenally, the rewards are overpriced and the required funding level is really high for their target market. Also, when they started apparently they intended to make an iOS exclusive game and acceded a PC port only when it seemed they would not get the support they were looking for. Asking for so much while at the same time severely restricting your target audience should have been an obvious bad idea. The more I read into it however, I am not entirely sure they really intended to make their goals. They may have just been testing the waters for interest. From the campaign page:

we believe that we can raise the necessary additional funds to complete République from potential outside investors, but there is some risk that our efforts will be unsuccessful. Before we enter into any financial agreements, we want to prove through Kickstarter that there is a market for a serious AAA mobile game

From that statement I get the sense that Kickstarter is being used as a marketing data mining tool rather than a true reach out to the community. If this is true I am not sure whether I believe this to be adorably creative or deplorably clever.

Kickstarter definitely has the potential to become inundated with shady and underhanded corporate practices that will dwarf and choke out its capability to be a truly democratic product exposure tool but for now I will check my cynicism at the door. However, as soon as I start seeing on that site banner ads, commercials inserted into the user submitted videos, or page hijacking pop-ups I will know Kickstarter has jumped the shark.

 

[Kae]

-Snip-

If that's the case then they aren't the first ones to do it, I believe there was this tactical shooter which I forgot what it was called that did that, but they were ridiculously transparent about it, and the final goal was only 200000, basically they were going to get publishers on board by showing there was interest by getting the 200000 dollars, and they did and they are now getting published but I don't really know by whom.

 

[Baneat]

Um.. why did you pay forty dollars for a pair of boxer shorts?

 

[Kesimir]

Um.. why did you pay forty dollars for a pair of boxer shorts?

It's a good and fair question honestly; you have to know me and my obsession with high quality things, especially clothing. First though, the $40 goes to three (3) pairs of 100% supima cotton underwear made in my home country in a brand new factory that is, hopefully, going to support new jobs in a troubled economy. And I am willing to support that kind of thing because I have the means. If it turns out that the jobs thing is a lie and the quality sucks than I simply won't support it twice. I tell you what I refuse to support anymore though: bargain stores and their $10 for a pack a of 20 made with all the lasting quality of a kleenex tissue. I'm not going to name names because I don't want to politicize this thread- just know that I am willing to pay extra for quality and honesty, or at least my perception of quality and honesty. To each, their own.

i agree the pc port seems like a half assed crap we cant make the money we need from the ios crowd move

Definitely, and to be honest I don't own an iPhone or a iPad so aside from my desire to support this TYPE of idea I would have no interest in this game if it was iOS exclusive. But it's clear their primary concept is merely mobile device specific, especially with touch screen capability so why they would not have included Android users in this is beyond me. I may be projecting my own biases here but the Kickstarter demographic definitely seems more Android than iPhone if you know what I mean.

 

[Kesimir]

Just thought I would update for the 1 person that might care (hi mom!!) Republique ultimately was funded, I have no idea how they managed to get $250k in the last 5 days of the kickstarter and the cynic in me really wants to cry collusion but in any case I call this one a win for good quasi-indie gaming ideas. Btw did I mention solid snake and femshep are voicing characters in the game?

 

[dyre]

Yeah, it's a little weird how some kickstarters seem to be able to raise half their required funds in the last few days (that tactical FPS game comes to mind). The game itself looks interesting enough though.